A few days ago, while traveling, I made my way down to Dartmouth’s Fitplus gym. That’s where I participated in a BJJ class taught by 6th degree Carlson Gracie black belt, Alexandre Penao.

Despite feeling slightly under the weather that evening I really enjoyed the training session. People often talk about the sense of camaraderie in the BJJ community. This is never more in evidence than when you walk into a new club and are welcomed on the mat as a brother-in-arms.

(And then your new friends try to choke you unconscious…).

One cool thing that happened that night is that Alexandre Penao showed us a technique that none of us had ever seen before.

It was a cool rolling choke against the turtle position. Then he showed us how to use that choke to set up an entry to the mount and choke the guy out from there. This second technique was also entirely new to me.

Now I’ve been doing BJJ a long time. And I’ve been practicing other grappling arts for even longer. But I hadn’t seen this stuff before. Not in person. Not on Youtube. Not in my extensive library of books and DVDs.

But the funny thing is that in BJJ this happens ALL THE TIME! Someone is always dreaming up new ways to choke somebody out, twist them into a pretzel, or flip them overhead.

No matter what belt rank you are, so long as you continue training you’ll accumulate new techniques, details and insights until the day you step off the mats for good.

We’re very luck that our sport is rich enough to allow this kind of continued growth.

How often do you think that an elite level boxer goes into the gym and has someone show him a completely new punch? How about two completely new punches?

This just doesn’t happen in boxing. Ever!

But in jiu-jitsu and submission grappling there’s always something new to learn.

Keep on rolling

Stephan Kesting
Grapplearts.com